


in word only.

by houmei



Category: Todd Allison & the Petunia Violet
Genre: Gen, Slight spoilers for ch 13, as always
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:49:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houmei/pseuds/houmei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he knows stories, sonnets, poems, and words. elijah elkwood has always been good with words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in word only.

01.  
When Elijah is thirteen, he recites the slow craven lines of wolves stalking children in the forest- recites magic incantations that turn songs into snow and shopkeepers into lizards. He illuminates the dampened caves underneath the nebulous depths of the world's oceans and brings lost treasures to light. He emphasizes the proud declaration of a pirate with one voice and the sinister whispers of a magician with another. As he waves his hands about and peels away the details that leave Petunia tucking her knees under her chin and Meredith sliding his forearms lower against his chest, the night thickens into a bleak blue ink that silently seeps into parts of the bedroom and creates the shadowy world in which Elijah's words exist and shudder to life. 

 

02.  
When Elijah is seventeen he familiarizes himself with the lines of Shakespeare he deems suitable enough to remember. He doesn't think a sonnet will prove to be a fruitful endeavor but he memorizes bits of A Midsummer Night's Dream. After a sticky warm night made up of four cigarettes and half of her father's liquor, Elijah calls upon the extent of his wooing knowledge written in the pages of books and speaks in tones of wisdom and love. He quotes nameless poetry as she traces the shape of a button on his shirt and stops when he thinks she's bored. She says she isn't, but admits that she'd like to hear some of his own poetry one of these days. Elijah thinks about this and lets her trace the shape of his heart.

 

03.  
When Elijah is twenty-one he is finally venomous. The words he arranges on his sleeve for his colleagues to read are both a callous warning and a stoic invitation. He invites the bouts of criticisms and is mindful of the whispers, especially the whispers. Malicious innuendos flee him, and Elijah doesn't find it ineffectual to respond in kind to these words. For once, words cannot equate to this kind of provocation. Elijah takes this knowledge and seeps it in- he muses: seeps it in as well as one's fresh blood on their clothes. He understands this and takes it to heart, as well as the hollow pleads of one who is too talkative and no longer deserves his tongue.

 

04.

When is Elijah is twenty-five he remembers death-

_Why do ye weep, sweet babes? can tears_

_speak grief in you_

_Who were but born_  
 _just as the modest morn_  
 _Teem'd her refreshing dew?_

He remembers bile in the middle of the night and bowing over to purge an empty stomach-

_Alas, you have not known that shower_

_That mars a flower,_  
 _Nor felt th' unkind_  
 _Breath of a blasting wind,_  
 _Nor are ye worn with years;_

He remembers the softness of feeling sadness and sinks in, but also remembers fearing the dark. Darkness and death. He's afraid of death.

_Or warp'd as we,_  
 _Who think it strange to see,_  
 _Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young,_  
 _To speak by tears, before ye have a tongue._

 

Elijah laughs at his fear of the dark and remembers the warm embrace for which it once cradled him. He hopes his death will feel the same way.

 

_Speak, whimpering younglings, and make known_  
 _The reason why_  
 _Ye droop and weep;_  
 _Is it for want of sleep,_  
 _Or childish lullaby?_

He reaches for Meredith in the dark-

_Or that ye have not seen as yet-_

as one reaches for their own death-

 

_The violet?_

 

and realizes his hands are warm. 

 

-

_...Or brought a kiss_  
 _From that Sweetheart, to this?_

_No, no, this sorrow shown_  
 _By your tears shed,_  
 _Would have this lecture read,_

_That things of greatest, so of meanest worth,_  
 _Conceived with grief are, and with tears brought forth._

 

05.  
Elijah murmurs the words in the dark, forgetting them almost the minute they part from his lips, too enraptured in the boiling shapes of foggy red that eclipse his vision when he closes his eyes. He's quiet and laconic. He feels Meredith breathing beside him but doesn't feel him moving. They are both still and placid. His fingers have been interlaced with Meredith's for hours. They ache. He goes on to explain what the verses may mean, what he thinks they mean, and all the melancholy implications in-between. In the very last hour of wakefulness Elijah apologizes and Meredith smiles sleepily. 

 

His hand squeezes Elijah's and Elijah remembers warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> _To Primroses (Filled with Morning Dew) by Robert Herrick._


End file.
